Saturday, October 15, 2016

Like it or not, demographic change will be the undoing of the Republican Party. Indeed, some Republican operatives believe that Trump - who they expect to lose dramatically - is only serving to expedite the GOP's death spiral because he has championed the positions that will lead to the death of the GOP. Moreover, many now believe that the party is incapable of reform. One such doomsayer is Bruce Bartlett, adviser to numerous Republican officeholders,
including Jack Kemp and President Ronald Reagan, for whom he was a domestic
policy adviser. Here are excerpts from Bartlett's op-ed in the Washington Post:

Last year, I wrotean articlecalling Donald Trump a godsend for
moderate Republicans. Trump, I predicted, would lose so spectacularly that the
GOP would be forced to transform itself, surrendering its mindless
obstructionism, science denial, xenophobia and plutocracy. After a purge like
that, the party would finally be able to compete in future national elections.

I was
wrong. I now see that Trump’s candidacy has exacerbated the Republican Party’s
weaknesses, alienating minorities, fracturing the base and stunting smart
policy development. The party’s structural problems are so severe that reform
is impossible. Even if Trump loses and the GOP races to forget him, the party
is doomed. And very few of our leaders seem to care.

In the short run, it will be easy
for Republicans to convince themselves that nothing needs to change. The
establishment believes that Trump is an anomaly, an aberration. GOP leaders
think the party’s next nominee will be a more typical politician who knows the
issues, has well-developed debating skills and who will appeal to the eliteandthe Trumpkins. Someone like John
Kasich or Marco Rubio.

Many leaders also assume that
Hillary Clinton is an automatic one-termer.
. . . . . But Clinton’s chances of being reelected in 2020 are better
than Republicans think. Already, Democrats have a virtual lock on 18 states,
giving them analmost automatic 242 electoral votes.
States such as Virginia, Colorado and Florida routinely vote Democratic, too.

Additionally, the Republican
Party will have to contend with the Trump constituency, which will remain a
powerful force in the presidential primaries (fueled, perhaps, by aTrump cable channel). White
nationalists will continue to back racist candidates, alienating minority
voters. It’s not hard to imagine another cycle with 17 candidates vying for the
nomination. If that comes to pass, someone could win the primary race with less
than half the vote, as Trump did.

If Clinton wins a second term, major progressive change
becomes possible. Sixteen years of Democratic presidents will give the Supreme
Court a solid liberal majority, making electoral reform doable. Restrictions on
campaign contributions and gerrymandering could emerge, making it harder to
draw districts that reliably swing one way or the other. If Democrats put resources
into state legislative races, they may be able to undercut GOP gerrymandering
after the 2020 census.

By 2022, it’s possible that Democrats will control
Congress and gridlock will be broken. Once that happens, the federal government
will be able to tackle major issues.

These policies will, of course, be opposed by Republicans
(even those who know better) because the GOP’s Trump/tea party wing will
control the nominating and primary process for years to come, dooming any
leader or lawmaker who compromises with Democrats.

As former U.S. deputy Treasury secretary Roger Altmanshowedrecently in the Financial Times, busi­ness­peo­ple
are already flocking to Clinton, and to Democrats more broadly.

Deprived of funding and business
support, the national GOP will shrivel to what the party has become in
California — irrelevant politically and unable to win outside its wealthy,
right-wing enclaves.

When I began criticizing the GOP for pandering to
populists and extremists, I was largely alone. But now, longtime Republican
luminaries, including John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager,Steve Schmidt,and
Washington Post columnistGeorge Will,share
my perspective. Many, such as Josh Barro, a columnist for Business Insider,
have virtually washed their hands of the party, viewing the intellectual rot as
terminal.

Because of the way our government is set up, the United
States will probably always have two parties. But it is not foreordained that
the GOP will be the center-right party. It could go the way of the Whigs or
Canada’s Conservative Party in 1993 and literally disappear, or it could
reconstitute itself so radically that it bears little resemblance to the Republican
Party of today. One thing, however, is certain: A party that cannot capture the
White House cannot survive.

The parade of major news papers in deep red states endorsing Hillary Clinton (some of which have almost never endorsed a Democrat) continues. Now, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the largest paper in in Louisiana has endorsed Hillary Clinton as "the only choice for president" despite her flaws. The other side of this coin is that no major newspaper - that is correct, none - has endorsed Donald Trump. Here are highlights from the Times-Picayune endorsement:

The president of the United States
has a sacred obligation to the people of this nation: to carry the torch for
our ideals. The promise of America is that your class, race, religion or gender
won't limit your opportunities. Every president should be committed first and
foremost to that principle. If not, how can we claim to lead the free world?

Ournext presidentwill inherit an economy
that has yet to fully recover from the 2008 recession. Jobs have grown over the
past eight years, but wages for many Americans are significantly lower than
they were pre-recession. More people have health care today, but the costs are
rising. There is a sense for many that their lives are not on stable financial
ground.

In an election that has become more
about "least dangerous" than "most inspiring," which
candidate is better qualified to confront the complex challenges facing us? Our
choice is Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton has a long record of
public service. She proved her dedication to equality when she traveled to
south Alabama as a law student in 1972 to uncover government-sanctionedracial
discrimination at private schools.

When her husband Bill Clinton was
president of the United States, she worked to get Congress to provide health
care services for millions of poor children. As a U.S. senator representing New
York, shehelped secure $21
billion from the federal government to help New York rebuild after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. Louisianians certainly can understand how important that was
to her constituents.

As secretary of state for President
Barack Obama, she negotiated a ceasefire in Gaza and got China, Russia and the
European Union to agree to sanctions against Iran. She also made women's rights
across the world a priority.

Mrs. Clinton is a
seriously flawed candidate. Many voters don't trust her, and with good reason.
. . . . But Mrs.
Clinton's failings can't compare, in scale or in number, to Republican nominee
Donald Trump's.

Mr. Trump has proved himself wholly
unsuited to be president. He has spent this campaign denigrating women,
Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, disabled people, the parents of a soldier who died
in Iraq and essentially anyone who questioned him. He has suggested that an
African-American protester at one of his rallies should be "roughed
up," made gross generalizations suggesting that all black people live in
poor, violent neighborhoods, expressed support for racial profiling by police.
And he threatened in the last debate to jail his political rival if elected.

Mr. Trump's go-to move is the insult.
His combative style would be disastrous on the world stage, where poorly chosen
words can incite violence and cost lives. His affection for Russian dictator
Vladimir Putin and use of Russian propaganda to attack Mrs. Clinton are a
frightening signal of what his approach to foreign policy would be.

The recording that surfaced Oct. 8 of
Mr. Trump bragging about forcing himself on women and grabbing them between the
legs is abhorrent. His characterization of the episode as mere "locker
room talk" bespoke a pathological inability to acknowledge, and repair,
his mistakes.

Also troubling is Mr. Trump's refusal
to release his tax returns, which is unprecedented in recent political history.
What is he hiding?

Although he routinely attacks Mrs.
Clinton as a "Washington insider," her experience in and around
government is clearly an asset. She is a policy wonk with a detailed vision of
what she wants to do and a unique understanding – as a former first lady, U.S.
senator and secretary of state – of how to achieve it.

As for which candidate is better for
Louisiana, there is no contest. Mrs. Clinton is committed to investments in
infrastructure, including ports, that would benefit our state. She also wants
tooffer preschool to
every 4-year-old, something that fits Louisiana's goal of expanding and
improving the quality of early childhood education.

But for New Orleanians, perhaps the
most compelling contrast between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton is his intolerance
and her inclusiveness. New Orleans has diversity in its DNA. A president who
routinely degrades African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and women could not,
and would not, represent us.

We don't believe Hillary
Clinton is everything America needs in a president. But we have no doubt that
she is the best choice on the 2016 ballot to move the country forward.

As a student of history, I believe that often people fail to see the larger events taking place around them and the dangerous directions in which their nation is headed. This certainly applies to Germans in the late 1920's and early 1930's when Hitler used anti-Semiticism and Germans' xenophobia and sense of victim hood in the wake of WWI to rise to power. I'm currently reading a new book, "The End of Tsarist Russia" that looks at the lead up to WWI and ultimately the Russian revolution and one see's many who failed to see the impending catastrophe. Fast forward to 2016 and here in America we see forces lead by Donald Trump seeking to destabilize American democracy for their own selfish and hated motivated means. As the last post noted, some Trump supporters want a putsch if Trump loses to Hillary Clinton - an actual revolt to overthrow the government. Americans need to wake up to the dangerous forces that are being unleashed. An editorial in the Washington Post looks at the danger. Here are highlights:

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES teach their officers how to respond
in case of exposure: Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations.
While perhaps good advice in the amoral context of espionage, these are not, or
should not be, words to live by for those who take part in democratic politics.
Yet when Republican Donald Trump was outed as a serial abuser of women, first
by his own words and then by testimony from a lengthening list of alleged
victims, he responded with tactics worthy of the Russian ex-KGB man Vladi­mir
Putin, whose leadership he so admires. Mr. Trump branded the women liars andblamed“the establishment and their media
enablers” for the purported smear.

One reason
to believe the charges is Mr. Trump’s own repugnant boast,captured
on videotapein 2005
and first reported a week ago by The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold, about how he
likes to “grab” women by their private parts and force himself on them, as an
exercise of his “star” power. Lacking the decency to take responsibility for
this, beyond a thin layer of apology in a thick sandwich of excuse-making, Mr.
Trump went on to compound verbally the insult he already inflicted on his
victims, through his conduct, with predictable attacks on their veracity,
motives and, of course,appearance.
Thus did the GOP nominee further confirm his unfitness for the White House, as
well as the cravenness of those elected leaders in his party who continue to
endorse him.

And then
Mr. Trump,speakingThursday in West Palm Beach, Fla.,escalated:
Beyond merely denying the truth of the allegations about his treatment of
women, he recast them as evidence that U.S. democracy itself is no longer
legitimate. Follow the logic here, if you can: The country is under the control
of a conspiracy, involving not just his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton,
and the media, but also the entire political “establishment,” Republicans
included, in league with unnamed international banks, whose goal is to enrich
themselves by controlling “the central base of world political power . . .
right here in America” and imposing “radical globalization and the
disenfranchisement of working people.” Mr. Trump, and the “movement” he
heads, are all that stand in the way of this evil cabal. This election,
therefore, is no ordinary political contest but “a crossroads in the history of
our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim
control over our government.” Ergo, the cabal will destroy Mr. Trump by
“slander” — unless the people stand up and resist “a small handful of global
special interests rigging the system.”

This language — which he read from a prepared text fed
into a teleprompter — is inflammatory beyond any demagoguery Mr. Trump had
offered previously. Coupled with his repeated warnings, echoed by his
followers, that the Democrats may be cooking up Election Day fraud, the speech
seems to prepare the ground for resistance in the increasingly likely event
that things don’t go his way Nov. 8. Indeed, anyone who agrees that the
alternative to a Trump victory is civilizational disaster, the fruit of a
“sinister deal,” as Mr. Trumpput itin another Florida speech, would feel
obligated to deny the legitimacy of a Clinton victory, should it occur.
Trump-for-President is not a campaign to redeem American democracy or even to
“take it back,” as Mr. Trump puts it; it has morphed into a campaign of
destabilization.

Mr. Trump’s words seek to make
accomplices of his listeners. Anyone who challenges the cabal “is deemed a
sexist, a racist, a xenophobe and morally deformed,” he told the West Palm
Beach audience. “They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to
destroy your career and your family, they will seek to destroy everything about
you, including your reputation.” As if the assembled Trumpkins were just as
guilty as he of all those alleged sins.

Still, it is not too late even for these GOP politicians
to repudiate Mr. Trump’s conspiratorial view of the American political process.
They should at least find the decency, and the patriotism, to declare that
everyone must respect the results on Nov. 8 — and pursue any protests or
disputes through legal channels, not in the streets. Even if Republicans can’t
bring themselves to part ways politically with Mr. Trump, they can refuse to
cooperate in the trashing of our public discourse and essential civic
traditions. Surely that is not too much to ask.

Being gay causes one, or at least it caused me, to start following anti-gay hate groups almost 20 years ago. Most wrap themselves in the cloak of "family values" organizations and use the excuse of "deeply held religious belief" to justify stigmatizing others and depriving others of civil rights. Often, those they hate are depicted as less than human and/or a threat to civilization. One thing I quickly discovered is that if one scratched beneath the "Christian" veneer of these organizations, they also tended to be anti-Semitic and racist. Indeed, in the case of Family Research Council, its president has well documented ties to white supremacy groups and here in Virginia, The Family Foundation membership traces back to those behind the "Massive Resistance" effort that closed Virginia public schools rather than desegregate them. In this election cycle, Donald Trump has brought both these relgious extremist groups and other hate groups, particularly white supremacy groups and white nationalist groups main stream and made them the core of his support within the GOP. Amazingly, many Republican friends continue to close their eyes to who they are now in bed with in their support for Trump, America's would be fuhrer. A lengthy piece in Mother Jones looks at how this happened. Here are highlights, but one should read the entire piece:

The
first warning signthat
something new was brewing came in June 2015, as Donald Trump joined the crowded
field vying for the Republican presidential nomination. In the extravagant lobby
of Trump Tower in New York City, he announced he would build a wall to keep out
Mexican criminals and "rapists."

"I urge all readers of this site to do whatever they
can to make Donald Trump President," wrote Andrew Anglin, publisher of the
neo-Nazi siteDaily Stormer,
12 days later. Anglin, a 32-year-old skinhead who wears an Aryan"Black Sun"tattoo
on his chest and riffs about the inferior "biological nature" of
black people, hailed Trump as "the only candidate who is even talking
about anything at all that matters."

This neo-Nazi seal of approval initially seemed like an
aberration. But two months later, when Trump released his immigration policy,
far-right extremists saw a clear signal that Trump understood their core anger
and fear about America being taken over by minorities and foreigners. Trump'splanto deport masses of undocumented
immigrants and end birthright citizenship was radical and thrilling—"a
revolution," in the words of influential white nationalist author Kevin
MacDonald, "to restore a White America."

Trump's move was a "game changer," said
MacDonald, a 70-year-old silver-haired former academic who edits theOccidental Observer, which
the Anti-Defamation Leaguecalls"online anti-Semitism's new
voice." Trump, hewrote,
"is saying what White Americans have been actually thinking for a very
long time."

"Stunning,"ravedPeter Brimelow, editor of the
anti-immigrant siteVDare.com.
"The thing that delighted us the most," he wrote, was Trump's plan to
close "the 'Anchor Baby' loophole," denying citizenship to the
American-born children of immigrants—a policy that Brimelow said he had been
advocating for more than a decade.

Trump "may be the last hope for a president
who would be good for white people," remarked Jared Taylor, who runs a
white nationalist website calledAmerican Renaissanceand once founded a think tank dedicated to
"scientifically" proving white superiority.

Trump fever quickly spread: Other extremists new
to presidential politics openly endorsed Trump, including Don Black, a former
grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the neo-Nazi
siteStormfront;Rocky Suhayda, chair of the American Nazi Party; and Rachel
Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, the successor to David
Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Richard Spencer, an emerging leader among a
new generation of white nationalists known as the "alt right,"
declared that Trump "loves white people."

But Trump did not become the object of white nationalist
affection simply because his positions reflect their core concerns. Extremists
made him their chosen candidate and now hail him as "Emperor
Trump" because he has amplified their message on social media—and,
perhaps most importantly, has gone to great lengths to avoid distancing himself
from the racist right. With the exception of Duke, Trump has not disavowed a
single endorsement from the dozens of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists,
and militia supporters who havebacked
him. The GOP nominee, along with his family members, staffers, and
surrogates, has instead provided an unprecedented platform for the ideas and
rhetoric of far-right extremists, extending their reach. And when challenged on
it by the press, Trump has stalled, feigned ignorance, or deflected—but has
never specifically rejected any of these other extremists or their ideas.

This stance has thrilled and emboldened hate groups far
more than has been generally understood during the 2016 race for the White
House. Moreover, Trump's tacit welcoming of these hate groups into mainstream
American politics will have long-lasting consequences, according to these
groups' own leaders, regardless of the election outcome.

A three-month investigation byMother Jonesand the Investigative Fund—including interviews
with white nationalist leaders and an analysis of social-media networks, nearly
100 hours of fringe talk radio, and dozens of posts on influential hate
sites—reveals that what has largely been portrayed by the media as Trump
"gaffes" has instead been understood by far-right extremists as a
warm embrace by Trump. Extremists' zeal for Trump only grew with his decision
in August to hire a new campaign chief, Stephen Bannon,the former publisher ofBreitbart
Newsanda big booster himself of far-right rhetoric.

In early October, when bombshell archival video
revealed Trump bragging about sexual assault and plunged his campaign and the
GOP into chaos, that only further energized his extremist supporters.
"Girls really don't mind guys that like pussies," influential
alt-right video blogger RamZPaulsaid. "They just hate guys who are pussies."

"The people believe Trump won the
debate," Anglinposted. "It's really just an objective fact. Not
sure how even liberal kikes could claim otherwise."

After a quick round of fact-checking and rebuke, however,
the media moved on. But white nationalist news sites and radio programs were
transfixed. . . . . Trump had done the politically unthinkable—and then
he doubled down, declining to delete the tweet (which remains live as of this
publication) and asking rhetorically on Fox News, "Am I gonna check every
statistic?" Even when Bill O'Reilly urged him, "Don't put your name
on stuff like this," Trump didn't back down, saying, "It came from
sources that are very credible, what can I tell you."

At various turns in the campaign, Trump
has faced questions from the media about his seeming dalliance with the far
right, from hisselection of a white nationalist party leader as a Republican
National Convention delegate,to his retweet of the handle @whitegenocideTM (which was
later suspended by Twitter). . .
. . But Trump didn't back down—greatly
impressing the men who had voiced the calls, Jared Taylor and American Freedom
Party leader William Johnson. Interviewed onPolitical
Cesspool,Taylor said,
"For days everybody was calling him up, calling up his campaign, saying,
'What do you think of these horrible people? Denounce them, denounce them.' And
he didn't. He maintained a dignified silence."

Just a few weeks later, Trump retweeted a
riff disparaging Jeb Bush that had been posted by @WhiteGenocideTM, whose user
had previously tweeted out his or heradmiration for Hitler. The account @TheNordicNation crowed, "You can say #WhiteGenocide now, Trump has brought it
into the mainstream."

Trump's embrace of the far right soon
moved beyond the internet. In late February, the Trump campaign granted Edwards
media credentials to broadcast from a Trump campaign rally in Tennessee; and
days later, Edwards interviewed Donald Trump Jr. on a white nationalist radio
show, theLiberty
RoundTable. Despite controversy over the interview, Edwards
then received credentials for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland,
where he interviewed members of Congress and a Trump surrogate for his show.

This courtship burst more fully into view
in February, when David Duke told his radio audience that voting against Trump
was "really treason to your heritage. "Whenasked about it by CNN's Jake Tapper, Trump tap-danced around the question, saying he
didn't know enough about Duke or the Klan to disavow them. The alt-right viewed
Trump's subsequent remarks on MSNBC'sMorning Joe—"David Duke is a bad person who I disavowed
on numerous occasions over the years"—not as a sign of retreat, but as one
of strength.

The pattern continued throughout the
presidential race, from Trump's disparagement of a Mexican Americanjudge
overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University toTrump's retweet of an anti-Semitic imagefeaturing
a Star of David and a pile of cash that white nationalists used to smear
Hillary Clinton. During the fallout from the latter, Trump went right along
with the far right's pushback that the star was simplya sheriff's badge. Trump also refused tocondemnthe barrage of anti-Semitic attacks on journalist Julia Ioffe
after she wrote an unflattering portrait of his wife, Melania Trump.

Donald Trump Jr. has also participated in
this dynamic, including with his recenttweet
of a memecomparing Syrian refugees to a bowl of poisonous Skittles,
which delighted extremists.

[I]n-depth analysiswe
conducted of Twitter activity during a week in September shed further light on
social-media connections between far-right extremists and the Trump campaign.
In consultation with the Southern Poverty Law Center,we compiled a list of hashtags and catchphrases stemming from
extremist movements, terms steeped in Holocaust denial, anti-Muslim invective,
and other expressions of bigotry and racism.

Our analysis of the accounts of more than
200 Trump campaign staffers and surrogates revealed that more than two dozen of
them were following five or more of the top extremist influencers.

Nancy Mace, Trump's coalitions director
for South Carolina, followed 67 extremist influencers in September, including
@Rebel_Bill, who regularly posts virulently anti-Semitic riffs and tweeted an
image of a transgender woman using a women's bathroom with the words:
"Prosecute or lynch."

Trump's South Carolina field director
Gerri McDaniel and New Hampshire operative Cynthia Howard each followed
@Suthen_boy, who goes by the name Gen. Robert E. Lee and has tweeted about
"Black Savages" and declared that "Germans better get over
Holocaust guilt or they'll wind up like the Jews only at the hands of muslim
vermin."

Geoff Diehl, Trump's Massachusetts field
director, followed @LiberalMediaSux, who has tweeted that Islam "condones
beastiality and pedophilia" and refers to Muslims as "goat
humpers." Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson followed accounts that have
declared that "multiculturalism" promotes a program of "genocide
against Whites" . . .

Trump surrogates have continued to court
the extreme right. In early October, Trump's son Eric and longtime adviser
Roger Stone both appeared on the far-right radio programLiberty RoundTable, the one that aired white nationalist James
Edwards' interview with Donald Trump Jr. in March. And on October 12, senior
Trump adviser A.J. Delgadoretweeted a commentfrom
the notoriously anti-Semitic siteThe
Right Stuff, which gave rise to the triple-parentheses "echo" symbol deployed by the alt-right on social media to
target Jewish writers.

It all stems from one core issue.
"Race is at the foundation of everything to the alt-righters," says
Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "They have
this idea that white people and white civilization are under assault by the
forces of political correctness."

The mainstreaming of alt-right ideology by
the Trump campaign has also had an invigorating effect on an older generation
of white nationalists.. . . . the surviving remnant of Duke's old organization, now being
revived by his daughter, Pendergraft, who specializes in white supremacist
appeals to women.

Pendergraft, who endorsed Trump last December, said her
organization has seen an increase in membership due to Trump. "White
people are realizing they are becoming strangers in their own country and they
do not have a major political voice speaking for them," she told us.
"Trump is one example of the alternative-right candidate Knights Party
members and supporters have been looking for.

He envisions alt-right candidates for
school board, city council, and mayor. "I feel my job will be done when at
the PTA meeting a woman gets up and says, 'Well of course there aren't as many
blacks in the AP courses, because they just do not have the same average IQ,'
and nobody objects."

Anglin predicted that if Trump loses,
"it is by fraud, and all of these people who are currently supporting him
are going to be radicalized." Those radicals, he said, will finally
realize "there is a Jewish media conspiracy" and "a war on the
White man." Picking up on Trump's own assertion that a Clinton victory
would mean the election is "rigged," Anglin said Trump would
"order a putsch." . . . If Barack Obama can legitimize gay
marriage and transsexuals, Donald Trump can legitimize the Alt-Right."

These people are horrible and dangerous. Growing up, my mother admonished me and my siblings to be careful who we associated with since it could label us in a negative way. It is time decent Republicans realize that the GOP has become a cesspool and leave it. It is no longer the party of my parents and grandparents. It has become something hideous and Trump has mainstreamed the hate and ugliness.

Although I would argue that at this point most moral and decent Republicans have fled the party and now see themselves as Independents or, in some cases even democrats, there nonetheless remain many in the GOP who want to renounce Donald Trump, the Tea Party and the factions of racists, white supremacists, homophobes and misogynists who now make up a majority or at a minimum a large plurality of the party base. Thus, the question becomes whether these individuals remain and try to take back the GOP transform it away from the parade of horrors it has become or do they simply walk away and form a new party that supports what the GOP of yesteryear stood for. A piece in Vox.com, suggests that some GOP strategists see the party splitting. Here are article excerpts:

Is
the Republican Party falling apart? Steve Schmidt — a GOP consultant who worked
on George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004 and ran John McCain’s campaign
in 2008 — thinks it very well might be.

“There will be the alt-right party; then there will
be a center-right conservative party,” he told me on Thursday. “I think what
you’re gonna see is [Trump campaign CEO and Breitbart News chief]Steve Bannonmonetizing 30 percent of the
electorate into aUKIP-style
movement and a billion-dollar media business.”

Schmidt was ahead of the curve in analyzing Donald
Trump’s rise,arguing to me in
August 2015that,
contrary to the beliefs of many experts, the GOP establishment had “no ability
to stop” Trump because actual Republican voters no longer paid any mind to what
their party elites thought.

So I got in touch with him for his thoughts on
what’s happened since, and he unloaded on Trump (“manifestly unfit in every
conceivable way”), Republican Party leadership (“political cowardice on a
massive level”), and evangelical leaders standing by the nominee despite
everything (“literally the modern-day Pharisees”). This conversation has been
edited for length and clarity.

The Trump campaign is over — Hillary Clinton is going to be
elected president. The question that remains here, the open question, is the
degree of the collateral damage, right? The Republicans are going to lose the
US Senate. The question is how many seats can they lose in the House.

Then there’s a long-term implication for the civic life of
the country, the vandalism being done, which will culminate for the first time
in American history with his refusal to make an ordinary concession where he
grants to the winner legitimacy by recognizing the legitimacy of the election.
I think it’s very clear he’s going to go out saying it’s a rigged system.

The
last implication for it behaviorally is it exposes at such a massive scale and
at such magnitude the hypocrisy of the Tony Perkinses and the Jerry Falwell
Jrs. and the Pat Robertsons. These people are literally the modern-day
Pharisees, they are the money changers in the temple, and they will forever be
destroyed from a credibility perspective.

There are millions of decent, faithful, committed
evangelicals in this country who have every right to participate in the
political process. But this country doesn’t ever need to hear a lecture from
any one of these people [Perkins, Falwell, etc.] again on a values issue, or
their denigration of good and decent gay people in this country.

[T]he
defense of Trump, the cowardice of so many Republican elected officials who
won’t confront this — what it exposes is political cowardice on a massive
level. It exposes a political class in the Republican Party that simply is
unfit to lead the country.

As a conservative Republican, I find anathematic
the regulatory and tax policies of liberal Democrats. But there’s no question
that Republicans — as an institution and what we’re led by — are unfit to run
the country, or to govern the country.

You have a massive reckoning coming due that will
play out over years on the serially putting party above country. We’ve reached
the moment in time that George Washington warned about in his farewell address
with the danger of factions. You have basically warring tribes that subordinate
the national interest to their tribal interest.

There’s no higher value obviously for most — though
not all — Republican elected officials than maintaining fidelity to Donald
Trump. What’s extraordinary about that is that in America, we don’t take an
oath to a strongman leader; we take it to the Constitution of the United
States. And Donald Trump is obviously manifestly unfit in every conceivable way
to occupy the office of the American head of state.

If, as current polling and projections suggest, Donald Trump loses the presidential election on November 8, 2016, as a nation America will nonetheless have to deal with the forces of hate and bigotry that Trump has not only release but also, at least in some circles. legitimized. And, many indications are that Trump, like a spoiled and petulant child would rather destroy the nation rather than face the reality that what he was peddling was abhorrent and not the face on a majority of Americans. Already his campaign and behavior suggest that such is the case. An op-ed in the New York Times sums up Trump's destructive attitude and the poison that he has unleashed. The column is worthy of a full read and it must be remembered that it is the Republican Party that created this monster and helped legitimize the ugliness that he represents. Here are op-ed highlights:

A wounded bear is a dangerous thing. Detested and defeated, Donald
Trump is now in a tear-the-country-down rage. Day after day, he rips at the
last remaining threads of decency holding this nation together. His opponent is
the devil, he says — hate her with all your heart. Forget about the
rule of law. Lock her up!

He’s made America vile. He’s
got angel-voiced children yelling “bitch” and flipping the bird at rallies.
He’s got young athletes chanting “build a wall” at Latino kids on the other
side. He’s made it O.K. to bully and fat-shame. He’s normalized perversion,
bragging about how an aging man with his sense of entitlement can walk in on
naked women.

Here’s his lesson for young
minds: If you’re rich and boorish enough, you can get away with anything. Get
away with sexual assault. Get away with not paying taxes. Get away with never
telling the truth. Get away with flirting with treason. Get away with stiffing
people who work for you, while you take yours. Get away with mocking the
disabled, veterans and families of war heroes.

[N]ow,
in the final days of a horrid campaign, an unshackled Trump is more national
threat than punch line. He’s determined to cause lasting damage.

But those who take pleasure in watching Trump destroy the Republican
Party are missing the bigger picture. He’s trying to destroy the country, as
well. Civility, always a tenuous thing, cannot be quickly restored in a society
that has learned to hate in public, at full throttle.

Trump has made compassion
suspect. Don’t reach out to starving refugees — they’re killers in disguise.
Don’t give to a charity that won’t reward you in some way. Don’t pay taxes that
build roads and offer relief to those washed away in a hurricane. That’s a
sucker’s game. We’re not all in this together. Taxes are for stupid people.

Every
sexual predator now has a defender at the top of the Republican ticket.

Trump
could not get hired at the drive-through window at a Jack in the Box. Knowing
about his history would make any employer liable. It took decades to get the
workplace to that point where Trumpian predators are shunned. Given the biggest
pulpit in the world, Trump is trying to bring that consensus down.

He’s
destroyed whatever moral standing leading Christian conservatives had —
starting with Mike Pence. Their selective piety is not teachable. . . . . Trump
is “actively promoting the very things that we Christians ought to oppose,” the
students wrote.

[I]t
has come to this: The core lessons that bind a civilized society are in play in
the last days of this election. We long for family dinners where Trump no
longer intrudes, for tailgate parties where football is all that matters, for
normalcy. Remember those days? They may be gone forever.

Whatever the fate of the GOP, it must never be forgotten that is Republicans who created the toxic atmosphere where Trump could flourish, at least among the GOP base. They must be held accountable and become political and social outcasts. The put self-advancement and partisanship ahead of the country and common decency.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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